After dinner, I have just washed and changed (into my black dress). Jean has gone to a Youth Parade to Hogsthorpe Chapel. I detest these parades and uniforms. It seems so still, no Father coming in and sitting reading and smoking, or asleep in his chair. I have no interest in the radio yet. It seems to trouble me, tho’ I like Jean to play her piano. There are still a lot of letters to answer. I wrote to Laurence [Hill] and John Gibson this morning. I am trying not to worry over the car selling and the other things. His bicycle has gone. It was of no use to keep it, but it seems like taking bits of me with it parting from the things he used. In time they say we get used to it, and indeed during the last war we got used to his being away, but there was a letter every day, and looking forward to his return. Always now there is the queer little feeling of fear in my mind, like I used to feel in air-raids when he was out, or if he was driving in a fog. Yet he never seems so far away, but I cannot see him or touch him.

We shall soon know whether we can have a Council House. It will be like tearing up roots to leave here. We have grown to love it and have had less worry the last 3 years from business than we ever had.

John Gibson was the husband of Ron’s wife Emmie’s cousin Annie.

During WWI, Will had worked on the land and would probably have been assigned to different locations. At the end of the War, in 1918, he had been on a farm in Sibsey, near Boston, as recalled in May’s Diary (see 11th November 1942).